The Deluge & other books

[Guest]

The Deluge: British Society and the First World War by Arthur Marwick

Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War by Gerad D DeGroot

The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War by Adrian Gregory

 

If anyone has read these books and has an opinion on them would be interested to hear. The reviews on Amazon are all positive.

 

Also interested to see how they differ from Winter's "The Great War and the British People" which is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the Great War in the wider context of how it impacted British society. 

 

Thanks in advance. MG

 

Edited 25 April , 2017 by Guest

[David Ridgus]

I have read Marwick and Gregory. They both cover largely the same ground. Marwick was the trailblazer for all the books you quote but I think is seen in a similar light to how, for instance, The Guns of August is viewed  amongst studies of the out break of the Great War - a towering achievement now somewhat overtaken by recent scholarship.

 

I really enjoyed Gregory's book, which wears its academic rigour lightly. I thought it particularly good on the early days of the war (he thoroughly debunks the 'over by Christmas' myth), and on the end of the war and its aftermath.

 

I'd go straight to Gregory

 

David

[Len Trim]

It"s donkeys years since I read The Deluge but I highly recommend it as I would anything  my old professor wrote. It was he who brought my OU studies alive, particularly summer schools when he lectured. Two non related items. He dismissed out of hand "women"s studies" and he asked his students to stay behind in the lecture hall for a few minutes so that he could get to the bar first.

Len

Edited 26 April , 2017 by Len Trim
spelling

[Guest]

   Martin - I know all 3 of the books you ask about, though I have not fully read the Gregory 

      Marwick was an early starter in the revival of Great War studies in the Sixties with the 50th anniversary of the Somme and Martin  Middlebrook's "First Day".  Marwick hit the main themes well- he was keen on the sociological and societal impacts of war, though his work now seems a little simplistic-and was not backed up with any greater magnum opus or body of works by either him or any of his students. He was the son of a distinguished Scottish history Prof.,(W.H.Marwick) flew high at an early age- a founding professor of the Open University- then hit the earth- or,rather, hit the bottle. Even when I first heard him speak in 1974 or so, it was obvious that drink had wrecked his career. Bringing sociology into History was innovative and interdisciplinary in the Sixties-very much the flavour of the OU- but innovation soon becomes waffle if not backed with the hard yards of subsequent research

    That said, The Deluge is a good introduction to the impact of the war on British society.-and a good read.  I will not comment on the Gregory,as I do not have it to hand and have not finished it.  The one for you is the De Groot- that is a good book.  Your strength is number crunching and sensible conclusions derived from an analysis of accurate historical data-You will like De Groot a lot. He is iconoclastic on some things but it is based on a thorough synthesis of good, hard number research. As an example- the received wisdom is that the war was a catastrophe for British society due to the heavy losses. But at the end of the war, Britain had a larger stock of military manpower than before the war, despite the c.1 million dead and double that as wounded. Why?  Because outward migration was stopped with the outbreak of war- the half million or so that migrated each year (on average) through the Long Nineteenth Century meant retained non-migrants outnumbered the losses-Counter-intuitive but the data is in De Groot. It's the book for you-will get you thinking about all sorts of things to do with the data you have already compiled- eg the thread on Irish recruiting that we had-Irish recruiting for the army had seen a long-term decline over the pre-war decades anyway. The restriction of emigration hit the Irish economy particularly-Look at the figures. Consequently, it seems there was a labour shift-Irish labour (unconscriptable) provided a boost to the civilian war economy both in Ireland and in the rest of the UK-the West Midlands and the Clyde Valley in particular- Conscripted labour into the arme forces from these areas was replaced by a different form of "conscription"-By preventing the migration of Irish men of military age, the British authorities "conscripted" Irish men- but into industry as the only effective employment, rather than by direct call-up into the armed forces.

    Head for De Groot.It will set you thinking